“So you were…what?” Bea asked the surfer. “Bobbing in the waves, trying to decide whether to marry her or not?”
“No. I’d already decided that.”
“And your decision was…?”
He stepped away from the sawhorses and the board that Jago was working on. “I don’t see what that question has to do with anything. So let me get us to the point. If Santo Kerne fell from the cliff, he was either pushed or his climbing gear failed. Since my car was some distance away from Polcare Cove and since I was on the water, I couldn’t have pushed him, which leaves his equipment failing in some way. So I expect what you really want to know is who had access to his equipment. Have I got us there a bit quicker by using the direct route, Inspector Hannaford?”
“I find there’re usually half a dozen routes to the truth,” Bea told him. “But you can travel this one, if you’ve a mind to.”
“I had no idea where he kept his equipment,” Angarrack told her. “I still don’t know. I’d assume he kept his climbing kit at home.”
“It was in his car.”
“Well, of course it would have been on that day, wouldn’t it?” he demanded. “He’d gone for a bloody climb, woman.”
“Lew…Just doing her job.” Jago spoke soothingly before he said to Bea, “I had access, if it comes down to it. Knowledge as well. The boy and his father had one run-in too many-”
“Over what?” Bea interrupted.
Jago Reeth and Angarrack exchanged a look. Bea saw this and repeated her question.
“Over anything,” was Jago’s reply. “They didn’t see eye to eye on much, and Santo removed his kit from the premises. Bit of an I’ll-show-you gesture, if you know what I mean.”
“‘I’ll show you’ what, exactly, Mr. Reeth?”
“I’ll show you…whatever boys think they got to show their dads.”
This answer hardly satisfied. Bea said, “If you know something pertinent-either of you-I’ll have it, please.”
Another look between them, this one longer. Jago said to Lew, “Mate…You know it’s not my place.”
“He made Madlyn pregnant,” Lew said abruptly. “And he had no intention of doing anything at all about it.”
Next to her, Bea felt DS Havers stir, itching to get involved but restraining herself. For her part, Bea had to wonder at the information’s being delivered so perfunctorily by the man who’d have had the most reason to do something about it.
“’Cording to Santo, his dad wanted him to do right by Madlyn,” Jago said. Then he added, “Sorry, Lew. I did still talk to the boy. Seemed the best, what with the baby coming.”
“Your daughter didn’t terminate the pregnancy, then?” Bea asked Angarrack.
“She intended to keep it…the child.”
“Intended?” DS Havers asked. “Past tense meaning…?”
“Miscarriage.”
“When did all this happen?” Bea asked.
“Miscarriage? At the beginning of April.”
“According to her, she’d already ended their relationship by then. So she’d done that in the midst of her pregnancy.”
“That would be correct.”
Bea glanced at Havers. The sergeant’s lips were rounded to an o, which was likely short for oh boy. They were on a most interesting track.
“How did you feel about this, Mr. Angarrack? And you as well, Mr. Reeth, since you’d taken such care to see the boy was supplied with condoms.”
“I didn’t feel good,” Angarrack said. “But if doing right by Madlyn was going to mean they’d marry, I was happier they were apart, believe me. I didn’t want her marrying him. They were only eighteen and besides…” He gestured away the rest of what he was going to say.
“Besides?” Havers prompted him.
“He’d shown his colours. He was a little sod. I didn’t want the girl involved with him any longer.”
“D’you mean he wanted her to abort?”
“I mean he didn’t care one way or another what she did, according to Madlyn. Which, apparently, was his style. Only she didn’t know that at first. Well, none of us did.”
“Must have made you frantic when you found out.”
“So did I kill him in my frantic state?” Lew asked. “Hardly. I had no reason to kill him.”
“Ill use of your daughter being insufficient reason?” Bea asked.
“It was over and done with. She was…She is recovering.” And he added, with a look at Jago, “Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Slow process,” was Jago’s reply.
“Made easier if Santo was dead, I daresay,” Bea pointed out.
“I’ve told you. I didn’t know where he kept his equipment, and had I known-”
“I knew,” Jago Reeth cut in. “Santo’s dad kept trying to sort him, see, after Madlyn came up pregnant. Like I said before, they rowed. Part of the row was that act-like-a-man-for-once challenge dads give their sons sometimes, and for Santo, it’s easier to apply acting like a man to something other than act-like-the-proper-father-of a-baby-that’s-coming. So he takes his climbing kit to do just that. ’Nstead of, ‘You want me to stand by Madlyn, I’ll stand by Madlyn,’ it was easier to have it, ‘You’d rather I climb cliffs than surf? Then I’ll climb. I’ll show you a real cliff climber, come down to it.’ Then off he went to climb. Now. Then. Whenever. He kept his kit in the boot of his car. I knew it was there.”
“May I assume that Madlyn knew as well?”
“She was with me,” Jago said. “The two of us had gone to Asperyl. We made the walk out to Hedra’s Hut. There was something inside she wanted to be rid of. It was the last thing that tied her to Santo Kerne.”
Aside from Santo himself, Bea thought. She said, “And what would this be?”
Jago set his sanding block gently on the deck of the surfboard. He said, “Look, she fell dead hard for Santo. He was-pardon, Lew, no dad likes to hear this-he was her first in bed. When things ended with them, she was in a bad way about it. And then came the matter of losing that baby. She was having trouble getting past it all, and who wouldn’t. So I told her to get rid of everything Santo, start to finish. She’d done that but there was this one last bit, so that’s what we were doing there. They’d carved their initials in the hut. Stupid kid stuff, with a heart and everything, if you c’n believe it. We went there to destroy it. Not the hut, mind you. It’s been there…Christ, what? A hundred years? We didn’t want to hurt the hut. Just the initials. We left the heart as it was.”
“Why not carry all this to the logical end?” Bea asked him.
“Which would be what?”
“The obvious, Mr. Reeth,” Havers put in. “Why not give Santo Kerne the chop as well?”
Lew Angarrack said hotly, “You hang on just a God damn minute-”
Bea cut him off. “Is she a jealous girl? Has she a history of striking back when she’s hurt? Either of you can answer, by the way.”
“If you’re trying to say-”
“I’m trying to get to the truth, Mr. Angarrack. Did Madlyn tell you-or you, Mr. Reeth-that Santo was seeing someone else in the midst of all this? And I do use seeing as a euphemism, by the way. He was shagging one of the older women hereabouts at the same time as he was shagging and impregnating your daughter. She’s told us as much, at least the shagging part. Well, she had to, as we’ve caught her in more than one lie so far and I’m afraid she’d lied herself into a brick wall. As things turn out, she’d followed the boy and there they were in this woman’s home, the virile, energetic, and young white ram enthusiastically tupping the ageing ewe. Did you know about this? Did you, Mr. Reeth?”
Lew Angarrack said, “No. No.” His drove his hand through his greying hair, dislodging a sand fall of polystyrene dust. “I’ve been caught up in my own affairs…I knew she and the boy were done for, and I thought that with time…Madlyn’s always been edgy. I’ve long thought it was due to her mum and the fact she left us and the fact that Madlyn doesn’t cope well with being left. Well, that seemed natural enough to me, and she always got past it in the end if something died between herself and someone else. I believed she’d get past this as well, even past the loss of the baby. So when she was as…as disturbed as she was, I did what I could, or what I thought I could to help her through it.”